Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new series on heritage radio network called the culinary call sheet where we give a peek into the back kitchen of culinary media. I'm your host, April Jones,

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

Absolutely what was once niche or a little silly, as I'm sure you remember, Darren, when we started out, this man has now become such a massive playing field for so many creatives using food as the medium.

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

With 20 years in the culinary production game ourselves. We're hoping we can give through these conversations an insider's view into personal stories from the field, as well as an in depth behind the scenes look into some of the most popular food programming. In today's evolving culinary media landscape.

We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

Yeah, it's a little bit of conversation, how to and how do you do the things that you do in color media, which I'm so excited about? I love so many of the guests that are coming on this season. We have talent from Food Network from Vice media eater refinery 29,

we've met some of the best people in the world both in front of and behind the camera. And we're bringing them all together to share their stories, their delicious adventure and their unique journey into this crazy world.

So to be the first to hear our episodes when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram. God

Hello, and welcome to cooking issues on the heritage Radio Network coming to you every Tuesday from 12 to 12 fortify the show where we answer all of your cooking related questions. I'm Dave Arnold host of cooking issues and I'm here with Mr. Joshi calling your questions to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 Today's show is being brought to you by TXR for all of your Macintosh related technical needs there www.techserve.com Tech with a que and they're actually there to sponsor but they're giving away basically their time here to talk about the Lower East Side Ecology Center and the Lower East Side Ecology Center is having its eighth annual after the holidays e waste event with 10 events in January and to find out where and when you know when they are there in the Lower East Side which is where I live go to L E S That's like low recite ecology center.org And they're gonna help you know put good use to all the equipment that you're gonna throw away after you get your new equipment after the holidays right and stash or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, by the way, it came to me through the grapevine that some listeners of the show believe that I somehow prevent Natasha from speaking on on the radio in fact, this is not the case I want all of your readers to know that I would be happy to have Natasha speak more on the radio it said she she particularly does not want me to make her speak on the radio so I might make her do some today just to prove that I am not purposely trying to hog all of the of the airtime you know, you don't really those of you out there probably don't really notice dosh today well she likes to be kind of the puppet master person in the background and manipulating dials and wheels doesn't like so much to to speak shook. Believe me. Believe me when we are not on the radio, she more than makes up for speaking her mind. Alright, and just put it that way. What do you think mustache? Any any comments? Yes, that's true. Yeah. All right. Well, in the light of trying to get you to say more, we had an email response, by the way, for those of you that didn't listen last time or any time, you know, we are, you know, basically a meat eating folk were meat eating crew. I lost a bet about that, you know, someone couldn't produce any raw chocolate that I would find even remotely palatable. I lost his bet. And as a result, I'm going to have To Indystar she decided to join me although she doesn't have to. I'm going to cook and eat well cook, I'm going to prepare and eat a raw, you know, raw food diet for a week, probably sometime in late January or February. Now, last week, I had said that maybe I would just do you know, I could eat like raw fish that's raw, right technically raw. And then someone emailed us, you know, a response to that basically calling us giant sissies more me because the star she hadn't said anything because of course, I never allowed her to speak. So you want to read the read the email there.

This comes from Pablo Escobar, the cooking issues team, I think you should go raw vegan because one, the raw chocolate bar you ate was mostly like most most most likely raw vegan, too. It's typically what it meant by raw foods three, it would be awesome to see how you innovate inside of these constraints for a diet where you can eat raw meat and fish for a week just doesn't sound that hard. That's it right.

And he had the one request, right. And

then as far as the writing goes, I think if you do make it about personal experience, my only advice is, don't make it sound too much like a post apocalyptic survivor story.

Well, probably, if we don't make it sound like a post a post apocalyptic survivor story, it won't be like any other day in our lives. It's getting like everyday for us is basically a survival story in the tech hole, you had to visit us sometime Pablo. And see, we literally live in kind of a small closet hole with no windows we don't like the entire world could have crumbled around us. And all we'll know is like the, the piled up mass of junk and equipment that that we live in, in this tiny closet. So our normal lives, you know, you know, is basically that post apocalyptic problem, so it won't have anything to do with the raw food, but it might have that tone anyway. Right? And stay well.

He also says he tried to do it for a week. And it's pretty hard, especially in New York in winter.

Oh, because you can't get the good, the good fruits and whatnot. Well, we could do it, it will do it. You know, it's it's just going to take a lot a lot of research. And that's the reason I have to put it off for so long, is I'm going to have to read, you know, basically every book I can find on the subject, because that's, you know, that's the way that's the way I wrote mustaches rolling her eyes, because she knows is going to be a huge pain in her behind. But I agree with you, Paul, a Pablo, rather and sorry. And we will do it. We will do raw vegan because you're correct. It's more of a challenge. And why not take on the challenge. I told my wife this last night, she was like, oh, not eating raw meat eating raw food. You know, for a week, I said, Well, what are you gonna do about it? I'm the only person that cooks in the whole house or prepares food. I keep on saying cook. You know what I mean? So like, she's kind of like, other than when she's at work. She has no choice really? Right. Right.

So she's gonna do it? Well, I

mean, I don't understand her choice was pizza, order pizza and not eat what I'm eating. I say the most. So here's the thing, right? Food is all about being social. So if you you know, like eating something separate from what my family is eating is kind of the worst idea in the world. I would rather eat nothing and go on a Gandhi fast, then prepare something separate for myself and the rest of my family. Like the whole point of eating with your family as you eat together, not a bunch of separate micro meals. You know, that it that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, so yes, she's going to she's going to eat raw food with me for a week, and she'll probably stock up on hamburgers or whatnot when she's at work. Okay, I had a question last week that I did not answer on eggs. And the the question was, what is in egg substitutes, and cuz, you know, he was having some problems with baking using the egg substitutes for baking. So I did some research on it. And there's basically two different classes of egg substitutes one, which I think is the one you're using if you're actually using to make omelets is more like it's called like egg beaters, things like that. And they're not really 100% egg substitute. They're not typically vegan, they're egg whites. And then they add flavoring and coloring and some other functional stuff to make it act more like an egg when you're scrambling it. So what's in the egg beaters, it's 99% egg white apparently. And then the rest of its color spice salt, onion powder, xanthan gum, and guar gum. Xanthan and the guar are going to modify the properties of the egg white and make it a little less hard. And also, you know, maybe give it some of the proper texture when it's being you know, poured poured out into your pan. So that's what's going to make it kind of act more like an omelet. That coloring is obviously going to make it more you know, more omelet colored and the onion and whatnot is I guess just flavors that they think you want in there. So that is basically the egg substitute, you know if you're just if that's the one you're using egg beaters. Now the reason that doesn't work well in baking for you is because they haven't added one of the prime things that is in eggs and that is less than right. So eggs contain a good bit of fat which also you know help in baking to make it taste better and there have functional properties but there's the emulsifier lecithin and a There are different various phospholipids and things in there. So, if you want to use those in conjunction, you know with with soy lecithin, which you can buy, right that you can add a little bit of soy lecithin and you'll probably get back a lot of the same properties that you are getting an egg when you're when you're baking. So I would add, I don't know, it's so hard to tell, I mean, I would add, you know, maybe half a percent by by volume or a percent on a great volume of soy lecithin to try and get that, get that that texture back, I would buy the powdered soy lecithin so you don't have to, you don't have to heat it too much to get it in and you can you know, blend it in with a stick blender and you should be able to get it in there and that might help your your baked goods perform better. Now they make now the reason why they probably don't put the soy lecithin in there is because they don't want to add a soy products because it's going to knock out a whole segment of their market if they put a soy product and most people aren't using it for baking. Most people who are using egg substitutes for baking are doing it because they want to go vegan, they typically don't want eggs either they're allergic to eggs, or they want an actual vegan product. And so those are typically powders, and they're usually mixtures of modified starches like tapioca. And potato starch. There's the energy is like one of the famous brands people use, and it contains basically tapioca starch, potato starch, calcium carbonate, which is a leavening agent. I don't know why they use calcium carbonate and other ones, but typically, I would use that as leavening agent, but it's kind of specific citric acid, sodium carboxymethylcellulose, which is modified cellulose product, which is going to provide viscosity in the batter and methylcellulose which is going to provide viscosity in the batter and also some chelation when the product is heated, and that's going to provide a little bit of structure that the aid would be providing. While the battery is hot, while it's you know, while it's hot and being cooked. So when it cools down whenever starches in your big thing will have time to set. I did a cake with Johnny Hasini from John George, based on this, you know, years ago where we literally doped a whole whole ton of Metacell not a whole ton me you know, like, you know, point 8% into a cake and fold it without adding a lot of egg white because we wanted to produce a sponge batter that didn't have that kind of protein bite to it. And so we use Metacell for the same property. So they're you know, they're basically including something that gels when it heats but on gels when it on heats there including thickeners and a little bit of a leavening agent because that's basically what eggs are doing in a in a baking system. So I hope this answers do you think that ants do a good job this week? Yes.

As opposed to drink when we're on the raw foods.

Well, that's interesting. So if you go to pure I liked that Natasha is all she has been thinking about this entire time is whether she gets to drink when we're on the raw food diet. I believe you do. The last time I was at sarcomas restaurant, pure pure food, right pure food pure. You know, they have wine. But you know, they they typically like all the wines were biodynamic and all that. I mean, we don't have to go biodynamic though, right. That's not part of that part of the list. I don't understand. Like, again, I'm gonna get a bunch of hate, you know, whatever, X, Y and Z, but I don't really understand the biodynamic thing myself. It's like, I understand. I understand. Look, it's true that old school farming methods like you know, like the lunar cycles and all this other thing and like planting based on like XY and Z weather science. Sure. I'm sure they have some sort of basis, in fact, generated by centuries of trial and error. You know, wisdom handed down from the ages boom. Yes, do I believe is? Yes. But like taking a horn and like packing it with manure, and then burying it in your field? Doesn't make any Dang. Any dang sense to me at all. You know what I mean? Like, that seems like hokum. No, yeah. But But I think that and I've said this before, I think what's good about it is if you're spending the time to go out in your fields and bury a horn full of donkey poo in your field, I think it means that you're paying more attention to your crops, which is probably going to make you have a better product. So it's not like that you don't necessarily end up making a better product this way. It's just that you know, it's just, it's not because of the horn and the donkey poo. The other thing that's really interesting is I think that a lot of people who are are interested in you know, biodynamics organics, they never do blind taste tests and never forget this, I went to a wine tasting. And the, you know, the person was handing out these completely organic biodynamic wines, right. And they were saying, you know, this wine was producing a field and a field is overgrown with all sorts of natural vegetation and was awesome obviously it was so it's full of life and then crickets and frogs and birds and mmm, you know, all this stuff, right? And then, right, he's like, and the one next door it looked totally barren. They had use, you know, chemicals on it, and there's nothing growing but the graves it was, you know, completely unlife like, there was no bubble. And I was like, Oh, wow, so you tasted those side by side and you really noticed a difference in the wines I was like, why would I taste that wines? I was like, what, what the whole point is you taste the two wines, and you prove your method does a better job so we need to find someone who actually knows that situation you can find two producers with very similar soils and climates and varieties like everything same same, but one's doing the biodynamic action and one's not and then we do a side by side that's interesting to me. That'd be interesting to you. Yeah. So if any of you out there have this capability please call or write in tournament let's go to our first commercial break but remember to call on your questions to 718497 to one to 87184972128 cooking issues so much phone call your name I don't want people to know you're getting down but gonna have gonna have luck gonna have got a guy everybody read now All right.

I'm gonna get back into Texas Hi.

Your questions to us and 184972128 That's 718-497-2128 coming to you live today from the refrigerated trailer. That is Roberta's pizzeria. Radio Station. Please come out and eat at the restaurant though. The restaurants nice and toasty. It's just the radio station that's a refrigerated storage unit. Perhaps Patrick storing his meat here from the Heritage food and that's why it has to be so cold. Okay. Now I have a question. A second time question from Max. And again, some of it is on unprintable so he says you know what? We used a phrase and maybe Nitasha can say it so I don't have to say at this time for a stick blender fildo Stick Yeah, okay. Yeah. And he said don't worry about that. But you know if you if you if you don't want to use that he gives me a word. I'm not really sure what what language it is. But I'm a little worried knowing Max's questions. I'm a little worried to actually say it for fear that I might be saying something but he says it translated to lopsided carrot as the as the stick blender. That's the slang he uses anyone anywho he has an interesting question. And his question is, why not pigs milk? This Max is an excellent question. And you've been worried about it for years as have I, although you seem to have actually, you know, arrived the same answer I did. And also spoken to more people about it, perhaps more pig farmers because if you spoke to at least one you've spoken to more than I have. But the question that always comes to mind is we have yaks, milk cheese. We have camel's milk cheese. We have cow's milk cheese. We have goat's milk cheese. We have sheep's milk cheese. You think of any other animals that like no right I mean basically domestic animals they make milk and you get cheese out of them. Why is there no pig milk and or and or pig cheese right now the kind of the answer I'd always come up with in my head and spoken to is yes I actually have spoken to some pig farmers but the the answer is that hey look, when a pig gives birth you use the milk from that pig to feed the piglets straight up you know and then you take them off of the when they take them off you when the when the pig off of me and the pig stops lactating. So you can have pigs again because pigs unlike other animals are really meat machines you know what I mean? It's not they're not kind of multi use animals. I mean, we get leather out of it Sure. bores bristles and whatnot. But compared to the cow where we get milk, where we get leather, you know a lot of leather or compared to the you know, the sheep or the goat where we can get wool and we can get meat and we can get milk or the chicken or we can get meat and egg the pig is a meat machine. You know it takes garbage and what used to take garbage and crap that you would otherwise not be able to use and convert it into meat that your family can eat. And so I think the idea was, is that you want to fatten up the little pigs to get him into meat as fast as possible. Another interesting thing that I did not know, Max, and thank you for bringing it up is that pigs don't produce nearly the amount of milk that cows produce per body per percent body weight, maybe 4% body weight, but Max says that the average pig is going to produce 13 pounds of milk a day as opposed to a cow that produces 65 pounds of milk per day. Yeah, but you know, what, Max up a cow is a whole hell of a lot bigger than a pig, I mean, a lot unless you have a giant, like super fat pig. So if you were gonna breed a fairly young sow, that was like on the range of like 200 pound or something like that, like, which is normal about slaughter weight, you're gonna breed at once, I mean, to get, you know, 13 pounds of milk out of that, as opposed to, you know, a cow that weighs, you know, well over 1000 pounds doesn't seem like such a bad, like, such a bad trade. Right? I think a lot of it goes to the fact that, you know, they just use it to feed the pigs. Now, if I had someone with a lot of money, sure, I would either mechanically, you know, feed those pigs something else, if that's even possible, I don't even know. And then just take the milk. I mean, Max, I think that, you know, next, I don't know where you where you live, but next time you're around, maybe we can find someone and just run an experiment. I mean, you could probably pay a farmer, the like, if you if you pay the farmer, the entire cost of the litter of pigs that he was going to be fed off of this pig, I am certain that he or she would sell the milk, and then you can taste it, see whether it's delicious. And and make some cheese out of it. I mean, you know, I think that's entirely entirely reasonable. Right? What do you think there was, you know, not to get gross about it. But there was a chef, I forget who it was in New York, who was using his wife's breast milk, to prepare things, but I think that was just a gimmick. I mean, it's got to be a gimmick. I mean, I've, you know, I have two kids. Listen, now I have two kids. And I'll tell you, you know, that if you if you have kids, and and your your wife, or you if you're a woman, you know, had to basically, you know, pump milk, so that you can go to work and then feed the kid the milk, then, you know, this is like a super precious commodity. This is not something that you're taking to the restaurant and turning into dairy products. This is like liquid gold that you treasure. And when you accidentally leave one out, and it goes bad on the counter, you know, you you're wracked with grief and horror and pain, you know what I mean? So it's not like something that I think you would normally normally do. But if a chef can do that, then you can definitely get some pig milk. And if you get your hands on some Macs, please, you know, let me in on it. At least call me send me an email and tell me how this stuff worked out. Because, you know, I'm dying to know, right? The staff She's not saying anything. I told you. She doesn't want to speak on the air. It's not me. It's not me.

What? Okay, so, look, this is all in good tone. By the way. This is still a family show. I've not seen anything. Anyway, Ben writes in and says some recipes, particularly particularly many Middle Eastern recipes for basmati rice, and most Asian recipes for short grain rice call for you to rinse, soak and or drain rice before cooking. other races and recipes tell you strictly never to wash rice. What does washing do for the final product? Is there any reason to use one rice washing method over another? Does the type of rice affect this decision, the temperature of the water etc, etc? Yes, there. So there's the problem is is that every culture has their own style of rice cooking and also their own style of rice that they're using here in the US, right? If you're if you're using a an enriched rice that they enrich with, you know, with nutrients and stuff like that, a lot of them are basically dusted on. So then if you were to rinse the rice, you would rinse off all of that all of that stuff. Now, that's not an issue so much if you're using rice, it hasn't been enriched, or if you use rice has been enriched with you know, I think they have one way they spray it like almost like a wax or an oil base in it or something like that where it stays in better with rinsing. So I think when someone tells you specifically specifically not to rinse it, what they're doing is they're basically saying don't wash off the nutrients, I would guess right now, the reason to rinse rice is because during the milling process of rice, there is excess Bran and starch that's on left on the outside of the rice. There's also you know, some of the rice is processed in some pretty nasty conditions, you know, you know, it could have twigs, it could have rocks, it could have dirt, it could have you know, animal or other types of bad products in it. So, rinsing is a good step to clean it out. And in fact, if you take rice and rinse it most any rice that you can get the rice turns cloudy really quickly, which means that there's a lot of soluble starch that's coming off of it or at least some sort of soluble powder back in the day, they also told you to rinse it because when they were milling it and sending it out, they would have a little bit of talc in to increase the kind of whiteness and also, I think as a milling aid and need to wash the talc out. So the rinsing step is most often to get rid of starch that's on the outside or that might that might, you know, interfere with things. And so you know, if you take a Japanese rice, right, which is somewhat sticky to begin with, but you don't want it you don't want the grains to be all glommed together, right? Then you're in a situation where, hey, look, you're going to do a lot of rinsing of this rice, especially because they don't cook it in a lot of boiling water, right, there's not that much point in, in in rinsing your rice, if you're going to cook it in an excess of boiling water, like it's done in some in some in Indian Recipes. Because if you're going to cook it in an excess of boiling water, right, the starch that is going to come off is going to be relatively diluted unless it's quite dirty, in which case, maybe you have to rent it anyway. But if you're going to cook it in either steamed or small amount of water, right, like like you would like a small amount of water for Japanese cooking. If you don't wash off that rice and there's any starch on the outside, then it's going to become sticky because the rice already has that that medium grain rice already has a bit of stickiness to it. So to get it to be exactly the right texture, you want to wash it until the water runs clear and there's no more starch coming off of it. And that's where those instructions come from. Now you know other types of rice, I don't think it's going to matter one way or the other. Too much was for instance, like you know and coming to soaking and cooking technique a lot depends on the type of rice soaking right your rice as opposed to washing it, you wash it and then you might soak it soaking it is helpful in situations where you want to either not use as much fuel because you want to get some of the water in before you start cooking or it also helps because any sort of water pre soaking into the rice is going to make the cook time quicker and also more even. So if you have a rice it tends to split open on the outside before the inside is cooked right. Then if you soak it beforehand, you're going to get a much faster and more even cooking the rice is going to come out better. Similarly with a sticky rice that steamed right you soak it beforehand because if you don't, it's going to be hard for the steaming method to to get the you know get more moisture into the pre soak on a steaming thing like that really helps cooking sticky rice now on a parboiled rice, right. The reason why you can boil parboiled rice in a lot of water for a long time. And it gets a bad name in this country because called converted rice. You know, like Uncle Ben's converted brown rice, it gets a bad name here because people think of some sort of newfangled like, like bull snares, but in fact, right, it's an ancient and fantastic technique, where you take whole rice whole, you know, instill in the hall, and you boil it for a period of time in the hall and you actually increase the nutrient content of your rice by boiling in the hole because you get some of the well so they say I haven't really actually read the studies. But you you know you get some of the nutrients from the whole into the rice also, you pregelatinized Some of that rice starch. Then when you cool it down it what's called Retrogrades re crystallizes and becomes resistant to swelling and bursting again. So parboiled rice actually doesn't necessarily cook faster. The ones that cook faster are also sometimes powerboat and then pre boil again and dried right so that they're basically they're pre cooked, which is different really from parboil, and they could very fast like Minute Rice, things like that. But traditional parboiled rice, which they have a lot of Indian Rice's that are parboiled, don't actually cook faster, I don't think although I'd have to go back and check. It's been a long time since I've looked at the recipe. But the interesting thing about them is that they don't rupture or break apart, the grains stay firm and together, even if they're cooked for a long time, and even if they're cooked in a lot of water. So they're it's a very good technique to get individual grains, they have a lot of bounce, they're harder in texture, even though they're cooked. Because the starch is basically you want to think of them as being kind of preset or you know, kind of strengthened by this this technique of parboiling cooling it starts retrograding then milling it, and then cooking it again. So there's a lot to do and it with rice. It's extremely complicated. It's based on you know, the type of rice you're using, the culture you're dealing with, and the recipe you're using. I think if your rice is coming out sticky, you're going to be better off and you don't want it to be you maybe you could benefit from some rinsing. If you don't want to rinse right and you do like Japanese style you can buy what's called the rinse Free Rice. It has a Japanese word which if I had it in front of me I would attempt to pronounce but I won't because I won't pronounce that in my head because I'll get it wrong and then everyone will laugh at me but rinse Free Rice uses a kind of newer milling technology that allows you to have a Japanese rice that has all of that extra starch and brand coating on the outside completely remove without the need for rinsing machines. And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do it anyway so it all depends I wish I could have a hard and fast answer for you but it's there is no hard and fast answer it's just knowing what the variables are and kind of how they how they interact was that useful? Yes yeah all right all right we'll go to our second commercial break calling your questions to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues so much bone saw your name I don't want people to know if you're getting down but gonna have a punk gonna have we're gonna have oh my god All right God bless read now All right. I'm gonna get back into debt as high on tables is

bad Welcome back to Cooking issues, call on your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. We heard from King Ingber. He was the gentleman that called in about his his mom's Turkey, which was left out in the stoop I believe it was a Brooklyn or Queens, Brooklyn, Brooklyn. And, and, you know, the question was, why didn't why didn't he die? And I thought it was interesting question. And so and he's still alive. Thank God. So he emailed us. Another one. He had a question about the Arabic and the Arab be is a coffee machine, I believe it's called Arabic. It's a coffee machine invented by the same guy that invented the psychotherapy as it is called the The Aerobie. The little frisbee that we came out like in the 80s. It's like a little ring that you can throw like the length of a whole football field. Even if you're like a tiny kid, you don't I'm talking about you have any idea what I'm talking about? Yes, ma'am. Old anyway. So this guy invented a coffee machine. I guess it is called the Arabic anyway. So it's a coffee machine, where he basically said, Look, I want to increase the amount of pressure in in the brewing chamber so that I can force the coffee through and thereby I guess get better extraction. So it's very simple mechanism. It's a piston, that you drive the hot water through your through the puck, right? And produce coffee. Now, the question has always been Is This espresso? And I'm saying this I still moustache. Let's just buy one of these dang things. Are they expensive? Like 40 bucks? We'll charge to the school. Let's, anyway. But no, seriously, we'll buy it. And we'll experiment with because I've gotten enough questions from it. And I've never tried it. So I feel kind of like a moron every time I talk about it. But it's, it's, you know, it's by all accounts a good product. But the question is, does it make espresso? And my answer is? No. Because of course, Ken calls me out on this. And he goes, Well, part of the controversy semantic because if you define espresso as a beverage brewed at 195, there's a range there but yeah, at nine bars also arrange with a mouse tail out of the porta filter that a device approves at 175 degrees Fahrenheit, which is what the Robie apparently does, with moderate hand pressure can't make Express espresso. And that's true. That's what I'm saying. But I don't think it's merely semantic. Because if you look at if you look at the book, the chemistry of quality espresso espresso, the chemistry of coffee by Andrea Ely, which is I believe available again, it was unavailable for a couple of years and is available again, there are numerous charts and graphs showing extraction and the type of not just like how much is extracted, but what is extracted at varying different pressures and temperatures. So you know, it's not gonna be the same cup of coffee because brewing kinetics is extremely complicated. And you know, in the new year, if I ever find time, I have a lot to do with with espressos and pressures and things like that, but it's extremely complicated. So I'm not saying that it can't make a fan Have a cup of coffee and maybe the best mocha style pot coffee ever. But I also wouldn't call and I don't dislike, by the way Moka Pot means those little kind of octagonal things that you put on your stove, and the water boils up through them and makes coffee, that's Moka Pot. And when I'm talking about, they're cheap, they're fine. Those things are, they're fine. They're great. They make a decent cup of coffee for what they are for a mocha cup of coffee. Right? They are a short, strong cup of coffee. However, to me, that does not mean that it is espresso, that is a different animal entirely. Right. So I'm not saying it doesn't make a great cup of coffee, and I and I shouldn't even talk about it until I get one. But I feel like I should address your question. Now. I don't feel that it could possibly make the same thing as, as an espresso at least not, of course, not intensely espresso, you get out anywhere is drink anyway. And so you might as well make it any dang way. Because the people who make it, you know, care not a whit for how it's made or what it tastes like, you know, like, like 999 times out of 10 You go and someone's pulling a shot in like 15 seconds or 45 seconds. And they don't really care that you know that you know what the shot time is, they're not really accurate with their dosing, they're not really accurate with their tamping their grinders aren't adjusted properly mean, any one of those variables throw off and your espresso is not going to be the same at which point, you know, maybe you might as well just make it out of a 40 $40 pot, which is which is not to be disparaging on the $40 thing, I really want to get one experiment with it, maybe maybe it'll change my life. And you know, I'll throw away my last San Marco espresso machine anyway, I don't know. But it definitely needs some experimentation. And he also pointed me to a really interesting little thing on coffee geek, which is a fantastic website. By the way, I love coffee geek. I've been going to it for a long, long time i lurk there, I never really comment, but it's fantastic site. And it points to a person who's measuring their coffee extraction using a refractometer, which is I've heard about before, but I've never actually done it. And again, now I feel foolish for not having done it. Because one of the main, you know, quality characteristics in coffee is how much stuff you're extracting out of the coffee bean. And the way one of the ways you could test this, obviously, is by measuring how much stuff other than water is in the coffee when you're done. And a lot of people use what's called a total dissolved solids meter that's basically measuring the conductivity to do this. And instead, this other gentleman whose name escapes me is using a refractometer, which seems like a fantastic technique and a really great way for someone at home or even in a restaurant to make sure that their coffee is staying on point, at least in terms of extraction. But remember, even at the same level of total extraction right out of coffee, it doesn't mean you're extracting the same thing, right? At different temperatures, different things are going to extract differently. So if you get let's say, whatever you're going to get, like, you know, 10% extraction out of the coffee, right being right, let's say you get that well, who's to say that it's the same 10% You're just measuring, you don't know that you don't know the distribution of you know, of the different elements that you're sucking out of the coffee and how that's affected by the pressure and the temperature. So to measure the performance of a machine strictly based on extraction in terms of what it reads on a refractometer I think is missing what you know the full kind of gestalt of what's going on and espresso and it also harks back to, you know, I think a real problem with all food science, which is, you know, we often, you know, I read, I read Food Science and you need to make metrics, you need to quantify what you're doing in order to have a result in order to have repeatability, especially in industrial commercial scale. But often these measurements which are trying to measure a very, very specific like Christmas, they're trying to measure like how you know how hard it is to break a deform across let's say, or total dissolved solids, or any one of a number of things. These metrics are really measuring something that isn't a single variable, but are controlled by a wide variety of different things that are going on within food systems mean the reason that food systems and drink systems are so interesting, other than the fact that they're delicious, and we eat them every day, is that there is such a richness to be encountered with a very small number of ingredients, starting ingredients. And so, you know, it's very hard to get a set of metrics, it's actually going to work as well as looking at it with your eyes feeling it with your hands and tasting it with your mouth because in the end, right that is all we really care about right? I mean, the the repeatability the metrics that thermometers have, which I love I love us because I love any gadget anyone knows me loves love any gadget, but the you know, like all of that is only an aid to trying to you know, get get to the best instrument of all which is your tongue and your nose and your eyes. So that's my my feeling. On the other hand, I'm gonna go out and get a refractometer that can measure my coffee with the right anyway

so I think in the time that we have left Oh discuss alkyl alkalinity and some some interesting things I think that we've been working on last week, someone asked a question about my art reactions. And I somehow got into a riff on Thai lime water, right. Remember that? Yeah. And so I'd read this website by, it's called, she's simmer. She's a blog, and she had a bunch of stuff on Thai cooking, I think she is tired. Her family is Thai. And they use this limestone water which is slaked, lime, calcium hydroxide, and they do numerous things. I've used it for years to harden bananas up when I'm going to you know, make a foster or something like that so that the bananas get a quick taste but they don't break up apparently can also be used for pumpkins. But she uses it and apparently is traditionally to be used in frying batteries as well. And I was extremely interested in in that because she says it makes it crispy are now in a rice in a rice flour situation. We have tested that and I haven't we haven't gotten any conclusive answers right and Stasha right. Yeah, I mean, Estancia preferred the one with the with the lime water in it because she likes the flavor of the lime water, which is reminiscent of pretzels are reminiscent of a tortilla because it's got this calcium hydroxide, this lye kind of flavor that Anastasia really liked. But it didn't seem like it was any crispier No. And it also didn't seem like a brown any faster. I was thinking I was gonna brown a lot faster because alkalinity accelerates my reactions. Yeah, we have to run all those again. Yeah, we have to again and again and again and again, you know, because of that question on my own reactions, I'm now in like a probably a five month K hole of worried about alkalinity and noodles, and, you know, and batters and frying, because it turns out that that this lie, you know, the use of alkaline cooking methods is goes across, kind of, you know, the world and culture it was was used in various places completely separately from each other. So, when I started reading about this Thai red line pace, and it came to my attention that is basically just calcium hydroxide. Well, calcium hydroxide is call, right is what the, what is used in, you know, you know, south of the border here, and Mexico and Central America, in South America to next Himalayas corn, right. And so, next embolization is the reason why everybody who lived here isn't dead, right? Because, you know, if your main staple is corn, right, and you don't know how to nixed Himalayas, which also the best word in English language, right, it's not even English, but this is best next embolization it's like that's an awesome word. Alright. So if you if you don't and the way an externalization works is you take calcium hydroxide you you put that in water with dried corn, you heat it for a while, and then you let it steep and what happens is from a functional standpoint, it makes it easier to mill and to grind because in back in the day there will be grinding the core and after it was you know boiled and soaked on something called a dot a mono which is like this like stone thing with like, the mono is like a square thing and they grind it that way directly from the corn grains into the masa that you would make the tortilla out of or whatever, you were grinding it to make tamales or whatever. And, and so I'm buying one by the way today. Yeah, anyway, go into the mustaches neighborhood to buy one anyway. So the basically it was easier for them to mill it also the alkalinity softened the husk on the outside of the of the corn and also thereby making it easier to milk. But the process of boiling and soaking in an alkaline solution because calcium hydroxide is alkaline, did two other things. Well, one more functional thing, it made the dough easier to work if you don't, if you just take cornmeal and mix it with water, it doesn't have the right texture of masa, right? Partially the boiling pre pregelatinized as the starch a little bit. And so that helps the the dose stick together provide some structure that it doesn't work, you know, because there's no gluten you need some structure in the dough. And so pregelatinized Some of the starch on the outside of the corn kernel in the beginning of the boiling procedure helps to do that. And also treating it with the the alkaline solution, the calcium hydroxide. That also causes the starch to be able to hold that hold more water, right and so it improves the dough capability so it holds more water, it's going to feel drier for a particular for particular water concentration and an all in all makes the dough easier to handle easier to form into into tortilla. And so without next amortization, there is no real tortilla production, right? But here's the kicker. It also makes niacin available in the corn that was not available beforehand. And so you get a bunch of Europeans showing up, and they ship the corn over to Europe and they grow it right. And it was cheap and easy to grow. So they grow it, and they start eating a largely corn based diet, and they all get pellagra because they're not getting the niacin because the dunces don't look and see that, you know, there's this procedure that's been done for, you know, millennia, literally millennia, right of Nixon realization, they don't think that's important. They think that they can just take the crank the grain crop corn, and build a whole culture around it without doing the next civilization. And as a result, we get pellagra. So this is a process it also has another effect in a culture that was probably deficient in milk at the time prior to the domestication of milk producing animals to go back to Max's question. The calcium hydroxide also radically increases the amount of calcium that's in the tortilla because the calcium goes into the corn. And so all of a sudden, now you have a lot more calcium available to the system, you have a lot easier thing to work with as a dough. And you have and you have nice and so it's all good. Now, I became interested in this, because I'm interested in all things like that. And so we started externalizing things based, you know, based on the fact that we're playing around with it using Thai red line paste. Um, now, we're going to tomorrow or the day after, we're going to tour tortilleria nixtamal, which is like the only place in New York that uses its own makes its own nixtamal. I'm getting a mitotic because I did some victimization of popcorn, which is weak. Don't try to do with popcorn. It's not the right kind of corn. I've read on the internet that it works fine. It does not work fine. It doesn't mean it works fine, but it doesn't mill very well. And without the stone grinder the mitotic Amano over the weekend when I was making tortilla for you know, my family for Sunday dinner. I blew out my Vita prep like three times I blew out my Cuisinart, it was a king hell mess and it still didn't get the texture. Exactly right. So today when I pick up the official Mexican grinder, I'll tell you whether or not you know next week hopefully whether or not it works, but I'm also interested in next analyzing other grains other than corn for just for giggles. Right. So what you know, we've done barley, we've done right, and we've done wheat. And I've had some success and some failure, and we'll come back on it. But uh, basically, we made something that was made with rye that had had a rye flavor, which Mustachio doesn't like, unfortunately, because she doesn't like things that are delicious. But also the flavor of tortilla, right? So a lot of the tortilla flavor what what differentiates it from just, you know, a corn meal cake is that lie cooking has a characteristic flavor, right. And so next time you bite into a tortillas think about the difference between that and an externalized corn and that flavor. And so I was achieving that flavor and other grains. Now we haven't yet done the control side by side of whether just boiling it for the same length of time without using the lime is going to produce the same kind of matter. But this is what we're working on in in cooking issues. We want to bring Nick civilization to the next level where he like usual, we're not content with just learning which we're going to do on Thursday from the people, real people who do it every day. So it's always best to go visit someone who does it every day. So you can get a feel for what it's like to do it right. I mean, it sure beats the you know, 400 pages of maximization crap, I read in the scientific literature that I downloaded off of my illegal connection to Columbia's servers, but the the, you know, nothing beats going and touching the real stuff, eating it tasting it. I will have practice with my mitotic mono by the time we make it to it, and next week this time, I mean, I won't be a master also, I'm not going to use a tortilla press the season me like that's like a sissy move. I need to learn to be like a Mexican grandma My goal in life other than you know, like, doing a good job on this raw food thing that we're going to do is a you know, and this is a long time life goal is to become a Mexican grandma. So that means I need I already have a milk of head day in my house, a little stone grinder, which I've had for years and a little like, you know, mortar and pestle. I've had one of those for you know, I don't know, 10 years, 12 years. So now when I get this grinder I'm one step closer and when I can form tortillas effortlessly by hand without a press I am and but then I have to learn Spanish and if I once I learned Spanish, I will officially be a Mexican grandma. And with that, I will tell you to go we have a new post up go check it out. It's on pairs. Natasha and I did a great pair tasting and I finally posted on him months later because I'm a lazy weasel cooking issues.